This element is very crucial in educational systems that strive to deliver significant outcomes in society. Employability is used in / by many institutions which strive hard to adjust its programs with the world of work. So, programs get reviewed internally and externally to improve contents, pedagogies and other educational practices. The quest for improvement is ongoing. And so it should in these complex and unstable times.
I presume in classical higher education contexts( particularly university level ) programs, concepts such as ' employability' ; 'workplace practices', 'technology', 'market', ' experiential learning and training' and professional practices' are less welcome and, usually, looked at with a suspicious eye, above all in the human and social sciences.
Yet, these 'ghost' concepts may be integrated in our programs smoothly should there be an intention / leadership to innovate and engage in professional developments schemes. For instance, one should :
- See case studies using professional training modes of instruction and see if he or she can transfer one or more of these practices into the discipline. These can be imported from Business and management sciences.
- Read about what is written on the didactics of his or her discipline. You cannot be good in pedagogy without being trained and constantly reflecting on your classroom ( online or in-class) practices. One could get inspired of active / action-based methods in teaching & learnings sciences that enhance learning/teaching companies and engage students accordingly.
I presume in classical higher education contexts( particularly university level ) programs, concepts such as ' employability' ; 'workplace practices', 'technology', 'market', ' experiential learning and training' and professional practices' are less welcome and, usually, looked at with a suspicious eye, above all in the human and social sciences.
Yet, these 'ghost' concepts may be integrated in our programs smoothly should there be an intention / leadership to innovate and engage in professional developments schemes. For instance, one should :
- See case studies using professional training modes of instruction and see if he or she can transfer one or more of these practices into the discipline. These can be imported from Business and management sciences.
- Read about what is written on the didactics of his or her discipline. You cannot be good in pedagogy without being trained and constantly reflecting on your classroom ( online or in-class) practices. One could get inspired of active / action-based methods in teaching & learnings sciences that enhance learning/teaching companies and engage students accordingly.
- Take a course on Teaching in a university context itself or on Andragogy to see the dynamics of teaching adult students and how they learn. Andragogy is not pedagogy. Professionally oriented disciplines are not the same like traditional and human or socially oriented disciplines. In other words, involve and engage in the scholarship or teaching & learning.
Our colleagues in the humanities and other disciplines ( apart from educations sciences) always seem to look down upon any pedagogical element in their practice; yet, it is a fact that nowadays in higher education, that this specific element becomes necessary. Things have changed in the world of the ivory towers!!! ' the professional', ' the pedagogical' and the 'technological' will prevail...much more after COVID time! . Content does not have the monopoly and prestige it used to have along the previous 200 years or so! since the emergence of the new university model of education.
A case in point, and this could apply to any other field, In the field of translation & interpreting, we witness the same scenario. Kiraly ( 1995, 2000, 2006, 2016) made a huge revolution in the field of applied translation studies . He made sense to the teaching and learning ( pedagogy) of translation. Before him, there were no such systematic ways of organizing translation classrooms.
